Analyses of God beliefs, atheism, religion, faith, miracles, evidence for religious claims, evil and God, arguments for and against God, atheism, agnosticism, the role of religion in society, and related issues.

27 comments:

I think this guy basically pointed out something that I see as a huge confusion in your argument: you conflate what data needs to be explained, with what the best explanation of that data is.

Specifically, in the case of the Resurrection, people don't believe it because of the data we have concerning the empty tomb, the post-mortem appearances, and the origin of the disciples belief. Those facts aren't supernatural and are open to historical investigation. Rather, people think that the best explanation of that data is that God raised Jesus from the dead.

On the other hand, there are certain facts about the Salem Witch Trials which we know. However, unlike the "Resurrection case," there are plausible naturalistic hypotheses for Salem that aren't analogous and parallel to the specific historical circumstances surrounding the life and death of Jesus. Other strong disanalogies exist as well, but this one is notable.

I will say that you do address something underdeveloped in NT studies though: the relevance of modern cognitive psychology to historical sources. That is the real merit of your work on this in my opinion.

PS: Hume pointed out that if the worlds religions have historical evidence on epistemic par with one another then they cancel each other out. However, you have chosen a case that wouldn't cancel out Christianity. Specifically, magic and Christianity aren't incompatible. You should have chosen something like alleged miracles from Islam, or Buddhism, or Hinduism (Good luck though, these religions don't rely on miracles for their truth).

@Silly atheists - By conceding that the only proof of God's hand can be through a direct violation of the "Laws of Nature", jayman777 loses the debate from the onset. Verifying whether or not laws of physics were violated at an event 2,000 years ago, will always at best be inconclusive.

As an analogy, take the story of the destruction of Sodom by fire raining down from the sky. Let's assume for sake of discussion that the story was based on a kernel of truth. It's only within the last 300 years that we have a naturalistic explanation for balls of fire can fall from the sky (e.g. meteors). IOW, the story of Sodom being destroyed no longer requires God to violate the Laws of Nature. If a Christian has a problem with this fact, it's only because he's put himself in a stupid corner.

@Some Guy - It's inconclusive, because you only have one instance in 2,000 years. So you could reasonably say, "we think the laws of nature might conceivably have been violated" (whatever that means), but that doesn't accomplish much. And I say "at best", because you're setting yourself up for a plausible naturalistic explanation to be found at some point in the future, as could be claimed for the firebombing of Sodom.

Oh I see. Instead of arguing with you about this particular point, I instead wanted to ask you if you have ever heard of, or better yet, read a book called Hume's Abject Failure by John Earman? I think that you might have your mind blown if you read it... and/or I could just give you the meat of it here and now as well.

Sorry, I haven't read it. I don't ascribe to Hume's definition of "miracle". That's because, like Spinoza, I don't think it's what any believer prior to 1748 considered to be the definition of "miracle".

I am a Christian at least to the extent that Spinoza was a Christian. I'm sure that many Christians consider me to be atheist, and I am a former militant atheist.

Hmmmm... I am interested to try and understand what you mean by I am a Christian as far as Spinoza was a Christian, and what you think actually happen at the "Resurrection" event is you define a miracle like Spinoza did. So, humbly, would you describe your view of the Resurrection, and how you think you may differ from a "typical" Christian.

SillyAtheists: Specifically, in the case of the Resurrection, people don't believe it because of the data we have concerning the empty tomb, the post-mortem appearances, and the origin of the disciples belief.In my experience people's belief is not based on this evidence at all. This stuff is brought out to justify the belief, post hoc.

SillyAtheists: Those facts aren't supernaturalThose aren't "facts", but are literary events. To establish them as probabilities requires further argumentation

SillyAtheists: and are open to historical investigation.And/or literary investigation. Actually, the literary investigation comes first, since all we have are words...

SillyAtheists: Rather, people think that the best explanation of that data is that God raised Jesus from the dead.This works back to my initial point - people use this sort of thing to buttress their beliefs, but these sorts of claims are not rationally coercive.

2) What jayman777 meant by, "It should also be noted that the apostle Paul was not grieving the death of Christ" is that Mccormick's attempted grief hallucinations explanation for the post-mortem appearances of Jesus has weak explanatory scope and power because Paul who was not grieving, enountered the resurrected Jesus on the Road to Damascus while he was an enemy of the Christian movement.

Let's practice the art of representing our opponents accurately a little better and also do them the honor of putting thought into our responses to them.

One of my favorite passages from Julie Holland's Weekends at Bellevue. She was a psych. at Bellevue Hospital in NY for years. Saw every kind of mental illness:

Being preoccupied with religion is a classic manic symptom . . In a manic state, people have less desire for sleep; they will talk more, create more, do more. Commonly, bipolar patients get hyper-religious in their newfound frenzy and sometimes end up on a street corner and then a psych ER explaining that they are Jesus or the Messiah, or that they’ve discovered a new religion. They’ve had a vision, an epiphany, and they want to share it with the world. Their grandiosity can be charismatic and alluring. Religions and cults are fomed around this kind of energy. . . (Weekends at Bellevue, Julie Holland.)The prevalence of people experiencing some or all of the symptoms of bipolar disorder in the general population is thought to be as high as 5%.

Every time I read passages like this, or talk to a student who's got hyper-religious thoughts and some mental illness problems, I think of Paul.

That certainly is an interesting excerpt, but you haven't done anything to demonstrate that Paul was bipolar. I wonder what justification you have for thinking that, if any?

Unfortunately, the genre of Psychobiography is rejected by historians.

Martin Hengel rightly concludes, "Lüdemann . . . does not recognize these limits on the historian. Here he gets into the realm of psychological explanations, for which no verification is really possible . . . . the sources are far too limited for such psychologizing analyses."1

So, if you are able to demonstrate your assertion with an argument, you will be responsible for an entire paradigm shift in the study of ancient history!

SomeGuy: Havok, do you have anything to say about the actual topic of this blog. So far, you haven't disagreed with the point being made by Silly Atheists.Yeah I did. SillyAtheist was claiming that certain literary events are historical facts (as you do in a later comment).

SomeGuy: 1) How do you explain the empty tomb?The empty tomb is a literary device. An explanation doesn't need to take it as a literal historical event, because we have no solid evidence of it - just cultic propaganda written 40+ years after the supposed event.

SomeGuy: enountered the resurrected Jesus on the Road to Damascus while he was an enemy of the Christian movement. Paul didn't encounter the resurrected Jesus. The best I think that can be maintained is a revelatory experience, a vision, and not an encounter with a flesh and blood being.

SomeGuy: Let's practice the art of representing our opponents accurately a little better and also do them the honor of putting thought into our responses to them.We also ought to represent out own position a little more accurately as well :-)

I can understand rejecting Psychobiography, but for me the best reasons to reject psychobiography go 10 times as well for rejecting supernatural interpretation of historical data, the claims far outstrip the evidence that can be presented.

What's to explain? It is one plot twist in a story. There is no historical verification of any "empty tomb" outside the books of the New Testament, which were written by fervent believers decades after the alleged events.

Outside of those stories, there is no historical record that Jesus H. Christ ever lived, let alone died, or was buried.

And supposing that I granted, ad argumentum, that Jesus H. Christ lived, was crucified, and placed in a tomb, and that his followers returned one morning to find the tomb empty, there are many more probable and less miraculous explanations which could be entertained. Maybe the Romans noted that the tomb had become a rallying point for undesirables, and removed the body and burned it (parallel in current history). Maybe a fervent and demented follower stole the body to fuel tales of a resurrection. Etc., etc, etc. There is no shortage of non-miraculous explanations.

What is your explanation for the fact that insects have six legs, not four, as described in Leviticus chapter 11?

"While I accept a natural explanation for the Salem Witch Trials, I do not claim that I can definitively rule out a supernatural explanation."How lucky for John Proctor and Rebecca Nurse they didn't have to rely upon jayman for their defense.

@Matt - That's a super interesting topic, IMO. We often admire artists who have certain types of mental imbalance, because the mental imbalance seems to actually contribute to creativity. And it's not just bipolarity -- I have interviewed several schizophrenics about their theories of the world, and they often have these amazing insights hidden among all of the insanity. Autism is another example. People with Asperger's are considered to be unreliable in many areas (like being able to think telologically), but it turns out that their insights in some areas are surprisingly good.

@Some guy - Sorry I missed your comment. Basically, I agree with Spinoza that the very phrase "violation of the Laws of Nature" is incoherent and non-Biblical. The concept has always seemed like complete nonsense to me.

Like Spinoza says, a "miracle" is just something that is exceedingly rare, and of a sort to be interpreted as a sign.

Re: miracles as 'exceedingly rare' events & the so-called incoherency of the phrase 'violations of the laws of nature.'

The phrase is not incoherent at all. That is, not if you define a law of nature as an empirical generalization of observable physical relationships and behaviors for which we have thus far no confirmed, repeatable contradictory observations.

In a sense, albeit a limited sense, we could, if you like, define a miracle as an exceedingly rare event, but if we were to do that, we would sin against imprecision and include far too much in our definition of miracles. (Which would, ironically, have the ancillary effect of trivializing your 'signs' thus making interpretation impossible.)

E.g., the poker hand aside, the next time you walk into your bathroom, at any one time the micro physical particles which comprise the atmosphere in the bathroom will occupy a certain space. The probability of any one arrangement is, to say the least, 'exceedingly' low, but any one assemblage is not a miracle, no?

To the avoid being too inclusive, we ought to define a law of nature along the probabilistic lines stated above and then define miracles with respect to that definition.

I am sure the definition would be non-Biblical, but I am confident it would not be 'incoherent.' ;-)

"The mere fact that one event has quantitatively more evidence than another does not mean we ignore the event with quantitatively less evidence. Seeing, hearing, and touching the physical Jesus is qualitatively better evidence for the supernatural than the visionary experiences of the afflicted girls in Salem."

We don't have "seeing, hearing, and touching" of the physical Jesus. We have anonymous, religious texts that claim that people have seen, heard, and touched the physical Jesus.

My book is out:

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Atheism

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Ph.D. in philosophy from the University of Rochester. Teaching at CSUS since 1996. My main area of research and publication now is atheism and philosophy of religion. I am also interested in philosophy of mind, epistemology, and rational decision theory/critical thinking.

Quotes:

"Science. It works, bitches."

"The God of the Old Testament is arguably the most unpleasant character in all fiction: jealous and proud of it; a petty, unjust, unforgiving control-freak; a vindictive, bloodthirsty ethnic cleanser; a misogynistic, homophobic, racist, infanticidal, genocidal, filicidal, pestilential, megalomaniacal, sadomasochistic, capriciously malevolent bully." - Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion

"Religion easily has the greatest bullshit story ever told. Think about it. Religion has actually convinced people that there's an invisible man living in the sky who watches everything you do, every minute of every day. And the invisible man has a special list of ten things he does not want you to do. And if you do any of these ten things he has a special place, full of fire and smoke and burning and torture and anguish where he will send you to live and suffer and burn and choke and scream and cry for ever and ever until the end of time. But he loves you! He loves you and he needs money!"George Carlin 1937 - 2008

Many Paths, No God.

I don't go to church, I AM a church, for fuck's sake. I'm MINISTRY. --Al Jourgensen

Every sect, as far as reason will help them, make use of it gladly; and where it fails them, they cry out, “It is a matter of faith, and above reason.”- John Locke, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding

If life evolved, then there isn't anything left for God to do.

The universe is not fine-tuned for humanity. Humanity is fine-tuned to the universe. Victor Stenger

Skeptical theists choose to ride the trolley car of skepticism concerning the goods that God would know so as to undercut the evidential argument from evil. But once on that trolley car it may not be easy to prevent that skepticism from also undercutting any reasons they may suppose they have for thinking that God will provide them and the worshipful faithful with life everlasting in his presence. William Rowe

Unless you're one of those Easter-bunny vitalists who believes that personality results from some unquantifiable divine spark, there's really no alternative to the mechanistic view of human nature. Peter Watts

The essence of humanity's spiritual dilemma is that we evolved genetically to accept one truth and discovered another. E.O. Wilson

Creating humans who could understand the contrast between good and evil without subjecting them to eons of horrible suffering would be an utterly inconsequential matter for an omnipotent being. MM

The second commandment is "Thou shall not construct any graven images." Is this really the pinnacle of what we can achieve morally? The second most important moral principle for all the generations of humanity? It would be so easy to improve upon the 10 Commandments. How about "Try not to deep fry all of your food"? Sam Harris

Religion comes from the period of human prehistory where nobody--not even the mighty Democritus who concluded that all matter was made from atoms--had the smallest idea what was going on. It comes from the bawling and fearful infancy of our species, and is a babyish attempt to meet our inescapable demand for knowledge (as well as comfort, reassurance, and other infantile needs). Today the least educated of my children knows much more about the natural order than any of the founders of religion, and one would think--though the connection is not a fully demonstrable one--that this is why they seem so uninterested in sending fellow humans to hell.Christopher Hitchens, God is Not Great

We believe with certainty that an ethical life can be lived without religion. And we know for a fact that the corollary holds true--that religion has caused innumerable people not just to conduct themselves no better than others, but to award themselves permission to behave in ways that would make a brothel-keeper or an ethnic cleanser raise an eyebrow. Christopher Hitchens, God Is Not Great

If atheism is a religion, then not playing chess is a hobby.

"Imagine a world in which generations of human beings come to believe that certain films were made by God or that specific software was coded by him. Imagine a future in which millions of our descendants murder each other over rival interpretations of Star Wars or Windows 98. Could anything--anything--be more ridiculous? And yet, this would be no more ridiculous than the world we are living in." Sam Harris, The End of Faith, 36.

"Only a tiny fraction of corpsesfossilize, and we are lucky to have as many intermediate fossils as we do. We could easily have had no fossils at all, and still the evidence for evolution from other sources, such as molecular genetics and geographical distribution, would be overwhelmingly strong. On the other hand, evolution makes the strong prediction that if a single fossil turned up in the wrong geological stratum, the theory would be blown out of the water." Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion, p. 127.

One cannot take, "believing in X gives me hope, makes me moral, or gives me comfort," to be a reason for believing X. It might make me moral if I believe that I will be shot the moment I do something immoral, but that doesn't make it possible for me to believe it, or to take its effects on me as reasons for thinking it is true. Matt McCormick

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Top Ten Myths about Belief in God

1. Myth: Without God, life has no meaning.

There are 1.2 billion Chinese who have no predominant religion, and 1 billion people in India who are predominantly Hindu. And 65% of Japan's 127 million people claim to be non-believers. It is laughable to suggest that none of these billions of people are leading meaningful lives.

2. Myth: Prayer works.

Numerous studies have now shown that remote, blind, inter-cessionary prayer has no effect whatsoever of the health or well-being of subject's health, psychological states, or longevity. Furthermore, we have no evidence to support the view that people who wish fervently in their heads for things that they want get those things at any higher rate than people who do not.

3. Myth: Atheists are less decent, less moral, and overall worse people than believers.

There are hundreds of millions of non-believers on the planet living normal, decent, moral lives. They love their children, care about others, obey laws, and try to keep from doing harm to others just like everyone else. In fact, in predominately non-believing countries such as in northern Europe, measures of societal health such as life expectancy at birth, adult literacy, per capita income, education, homicide, suicide, gender equality, and political coercion are better than they are in believing societies.

4. Myth: Belief in God is compatible with the descriptions, explanations and products of science.

In the past, every supernatural or paranormal explanation of phenomena that humans believed turned out to be mistaken; science has always found a physical explanation that revealed that the supernatural view was a myth. Modern organisms evolved from lower life forms, they weren't created 6,000 years ago in the finished state. Fever is not caused by demon possession. Bad weather is not the wrath of angry gods. Miracle claims have turned out to be mistakes, frauds, or deceptions. So we have every reason to conclude that science will continue to undermine the superstitious worldview of religion.

5. Myth: We have immortal souls that survive the death of the body.

We have mountains of evidence that makes it clear that our consciousness, our beliefs, our desires, our thoughts all depend upon the proper functioning of our brains our nervous systems to exist. So when the brain dies, all of these things that we identify with the soul also cease to exist. Despite the fact that billions of people have lived and died on this planet, we do not have a single credible case of someone's soul, or consciousness, or personality continuing to exist despite the demise of their bodies. Allegations of spirit chandlers, psychics, ghost stories, and communications with the dead have all turned out to be frauds, deceptions, mistakes, and lies.

6. Myth: If there is no God, everything is permitted. Only belief in God makes people moral.

Consider the billions of people in China, India, and Japan above. If this claim was true, none of them would be decent moral people. So Ghandi, the Buddha, and Confucius, to name only a few were not moral people on this view, not to mention these other famous atheists: Abraham Lincoln, Albert Einstein, Aldous Huxley, Charles Darwin, Benjamin Franklin, Carl Sagan, Bertrand Russell, Elizabeth Cady-Stanton, John Stuart Mill, Galileo, George Bernard Shaw, Gloria Steinam, James Madison, John Adams, and so on.

7. Myth: Believing in God is never a root cause of significant evil.

The counter examples of cases where it was someone's belief in God that was the direct justification for their perpetrated horrendous evils on humankind are too numerous to mention.

8. Myth: The existence of God would explain the origins of the universe and humanity.

All of the questions that allegedly plague non-God attempts to explain our origins--why are we here, where are we going, what is the point of it all, why is the universe here--still apply to the faux explanation of God. The suggestion that God created everything does not make it any clearer to us where it all came from, how he created it, why he created it, where it isall going. In fact, it raises even more difficult mysteries: how did God, operating outside the confines of space, time, and natural law "create" or "build" a universe that has physical laws? We have no precedent and maybe no hope of answering or understanding such a possibility. What does it mean to say that some disembodied, spiritual being who knows everything and has all power, "loves" us, or has thoughts, or goals, or plans? How could such a being have any sort of personal relationship with beings like us?

9. Myth: Even if it isn't true, there's no harm in my believing in God anyway.

People's religious views inform their voting, how they raise their children, what they think is moral and immoral, what laws and legislation they pass, who they are friends and enemies with, what companies they invest in, where they donate to charities, who they approve and disapprove of, who they are willing to kill or tolerate, what crimes they are willing to commit, and which wars they are willing to fight. How could any reasonable person think that religious beliefs are insignificant.

10: Myth: There is a God.

Common Criticisms of Atheism (and Why They’re Mistaken)

1. You can’t prove atheism.You can never prove a negative, so atheism requires as much faith as religion.

Atheists are frequently accosted with this accusation, suggesting that in order for non-belief to be reasonable, it must be founded on deductively certain grounds. Many atheists within the deductive atheology tradition have presented just those sorts of arguments, but those arguments are often ignored. But more importantly, the critic has invoked a standard of justification that almost none of our beliefs meet. If we demand that beliefs are not justified unless we have deductive proof, then all of us will have to throw out the vast majority of things we currently believe—oxygen exists, the Earth orbits the Sun, viruses cause disease, the 2008 summer Olympics were in China, and so on. The believer has invoked one set of abnormally stringent standards for the atheist while helping himself to countless beliefs of his own that cannot satisfy those standards. Deductive certainty is not required to draw a reasonable conclusion that a claim is true.

As for requiring faith, is the objection that no matter what, all positions require faith?Would that imply that one is free to just adopt any view they like?Religiousness and non-belief are on the same footing?(they aren’t).If so, then the believer can hardly criticize the non-believer for not believing. Is the objection that one should never believe anything on the basis of faith?Faith is a bad thing?That would be a surprising position for the believer to take, and, ironically, the atheist is in complete agreement.

2. The evidence shows that we should believe.

If in fact there is sufficient evidence to indicate that God exists, then a reasonable person should believe it. Surprisingly, very few people pursue this line as a criticism of atheism. But recently, modern versions of the design and cosmological arguments have been presented by believers that require serious consideration. Many atheists cite a range of reasons why they do not believe that these arguments are successful. If an atheist has reflected carefully on the best evidence presented for God’s existence and finds that evidence insufficient, then it’s implausible to fault them for irrationality, epistemic irresponsibility, or for being obviously mistaken.Given that atheists are so widely criticized, and that religious belief is so common and encouraged uncritically, the chances are good that any given atheist has reflected more carefully about the evidence.

3. You should have faith.

Appeals to faith also should not be construed as having prescriptive force the way appeals to evidence or arguments do. The general view is that when a person grasps that an argument is sound, that imposes an epistemic obligation of sorts on her to accept the conclusion. One person’s faith that God exists does not have this sort of inter-subjective implication. Failing to believe what is clearly supported by the evidence is ordinarily irrational. Failure to have faith that some claim is true is not similarly culpable. At the very least, having faith, where that means believing despite a lack of evidence or despite contrary evidence is highly suspect. Having faith is the questionable practice, not failing to have it.

4. Atheism is bleak, nihilistic, amoral, dehumanizing, or depressing.

These accusations have been dealt with countless times. But let’s suppose that they are correct. Would they be reasons to reject the truth of atheism? They might be unpleasant affects, but having negative emotions about a claim doesn’t provide us with any evidence that it is false. Imagine upon hearing news about the Americans dropping atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki someone steadfastly refused to believe it because it was bleak, nihilistic, amoral, dehumanizing, or depressing. Suppose we refused to believe that there is an AIDS epidemic that is killing hundreds of thousands of people in Africa on the same grounds.

5.Atheism is bad for you.Some studies in recent years have suggested that people who regularly attend church, pray, and participate in religious activities are happier, live longer, have better health, and less depression.

First, these results and the methodologies that produced them have been thoroughly criticized by experts in the field.Second, it would be foolish to conclude that even if these claims about quality of life were true, that somehow shows that there is theism is correct and atheism is mistaken.What would follow, perhaps, is that participating in social events like those in religious practices are good for you, nothing more.There are a number of obvious natural explanations.Third, it is difficult to know the direction of the causal arrow in these cases.Does being religious result in these positive effects, or are people who are happier, healthier, and not depressed more inclined to participate in religions for some other reasons?Fourth, in a number of studies atheistic societies like those in northern Europe scored higher on a wide range of society health measures than religious societies.

Given that atheists make up a tiny proportion of the world’s population, and that religious governments and ideals have held sway globally for thousands of years, believers will certainly lose in a contest over “who has done more harm,” or “which ideology has caused more human suffering.”It has not been atheism because atheists have been widely persecuted, tortured, and killed for centuries nearly to the point of extinction.

Sam Harris has argued that the problem with these regimes has been that they became too much like religions.“Such regimes are dogmatic to the core and generally give rise to personality cults that are indistinguishable from cults of religious hero worship. Auschwitz, the gulag, and the killing fields were not examples of what happens when human beings reject religious dogma; they are examples of political, racial and nationalistic dogma run amok. There is no society in human history that ever suffered because its people became too reasonable.”

7.Atheists are harsh, intolerant, and hateful of religion.

Sam Harris has advocated something he calls “conversational intolerance.”For too long, a confusion about religious tolerance has led people to look the other way and say nothing while people with dangerous religious agendas have undermined science, the public good, and the progress of the human race.There is no doubt that people are entitled to read what they choose, write and speak freely, and pursue the religions of their choice.But that entitlement does not guarantee that the rest of us must remain silent or not verbally criticize or object to their ideas and their practices, especially when they affect all of us.Religious beliefs have a direct affect on who a person votes for, what wars they fight, who they elect to the school board, what laws they pass, who they drop bombs on, what research they fund (and don’t), which social programs they fund (and don’t), and a long list of other vital, public matters.Atheists are under no obligation to remain silent about those beliefs and practices that urgently need to be brought into the light and reasonably evaluated.

Real respect for humanity will not be found by indulging your neighbor’s foolishness, or overlooking dangerous mistakes.Real respect is found in disagreement.The most important thing we can do for each other is disagree vigorously and thoughtfully so that we can all get closer to the truth.

8.Science is as much a religious ideology as religion is.

At their cores, religions and science have a profound difference.The essence of religion is sustaining belief in the face of doubts, obeying authority, and conforming to a fixed set of doctrines.By contrast, the most important discovery that humans have ever made is the scientific method.The essence of that method is diametrically opposed to religious ideals:actively seek out disconfirming evidence.The cardinal virtues of the scientific approach are to doubt, analyze, critique, be skeptical, and always be prepared to draw a different conclusion if the evidence demands it.